Blackberry & SBS2003
 

I am the admin of a MS Small Business Server 2003 system for around a dozen people. The president of the company recently got a blackberry activated on the TMobile network and would like to have access to his Exchange email on it.

Can someone really quickly list out the various options I have? I understand the most complex and expensive is to setup a BES server - but I'm sure there are others...

Thanks in advance.

can someone please comment?

1. Web Client
2. 3rd party hosting
3. BES

Do you plan to have less than 15 users? Small Business BES is only $1,200.00.

He can use the redirector but it has to left on and connected to the network.

We are running SBS2003 and have a PIX 506E FIrewall setup w/ only http(s) and smtp open. I do not have my Exchange server configured for POP or IMAP access. I used TMobile's BWC and set up my Exchange account information expecting it to fail. It works like a charm and I get all my Exchange email delivered to my handheld. I did not think this would work, and it freaked me out that maybe something wasn't configured correctly on my firewall. But it sure is nice having my work email readable on my BB. If someone reading this can explain why this works or if I am leaving my network open to attacks because my firewall is not configured correctly, I would sleep a little better at night.

I have no idea how to delete this post.

You must have one of the two options on. The BWC would not work without.

Ralphkaz,

There are several ways that you can have the corporate emails received in exchange be sent to the end-user Blackberry’s account.

In my opinion the easiest way to do this without too much configuration is to create a Contact Object in the Active Directory and then create a rule on the User Exchange properties to forward email to the blackberry account

On the Exchange Server –

Create a new contact account with email capabilities:
Active Directory User and Computers – Under the domain, right click on Users then click New > Contact. Fill the information of the user… Ex: User_Blackberry

Then click on Next (Make sure the Create an Exchange e-mail address option is checked). Click on Modify.. and select SMTP Address on the New E-mail Address window, then click OK. In the next window, type the user email address of the Blackberry device Exp:
Click on Next and then finish
After the object of the contact is created in Active Directory, Open the properties of the users that you want to forward the emails to the BB account
Go to the Exchange General Tab Click on Delivery Options - Check on the Forward to Option and then click on Modify. On the select recipient window type the name of the contact Object you just created. Exp: User_Blackberry and then click OK. It should resolve to the email address of the Contact Object - Exp:
Make sure the Deliver messages to both forward address and mailbox option is checked. Press Ok and OK to close the user properties window

That is all you have to do. You can create as many Contact Objects you desire to forward emails to other SMTP/POP3 accounts

I hope this info can help you

PDX

you can't run BES on SBS because Exchange is on the SBS box. Only way is to install a second Box with MS server (of some flavour) and run BES on that. Or use the Blackberry webclient to grab mail from the POP3 connector on Exchange...

Southewest, I think you are replying to my post. This does not appear to be the case. I have no connector running on Exchange except for SMTP, you can not connect via POP or IMAP even inside the office. I did close the SMTP port on my Firewall and verified that BWC could no longer connect to my email so it does look like it is going through there. And again, I have the ports closed for everything else. So this clearly works, the question is should it? I never read anyone mentioning this setup to this quesion, so it has me worried. You lose some of the stuff from not having a hosted BES, but seems to give decent functionality for a tiny company or userbase. Looking for feedback from the big brains. Thanks.

You can install BES 4.0 on an Exchange 2003 server running on Windows Server 2003. I have done it and have been instructed by RIM that it is supported. I'm not sure about installing it on SBS though.

I was told that yes it would work but no it was not recommended due to the amount of processor timeslice it would take. You will severely degrade performance and also if you install a SP and have to reboot, everything goes down and not just the BES

Just my .015$

Small/Medium Business Edition for a dozen users would be $1500 (server and 5 CALs) + $1000 (5-pack CALs) + $500 (2 CALs @ $250) = $3000. Not sure from where you got $1200.

Personally I just use the contact forwarding because we only have 9 BBs and it's not worth $2500 + hardware + Windows Server license for only 9 users.

As for the performance of BES on the Exchange box, it obviously depends on your hardware and load, doesn't it? You can't make categorical statements.